


Growing Pains

by Kikithehousemoose



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, F/M, Gen, Love that kid but youre not relevant rn, Medical marijuana, Molly Weasley and Peter Pettigrew are in here too, Nymphadora Tonks Lives, Past Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Teddy is There sort of hes in the background, They both live obviously, also theres a mention of, remus gets high and theres nothing you can do about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-06 15:59:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17942786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kikithehousemoose/pseuds/Kikithehousemoose
Summary: Remus Lupin has endured over 50 years worth of transformations. Something as drastic as that has to take a toll on one's body, and take it did.





	Growing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> Fulfilling the request for how Remus's body starts to get effected by the transformations when he's older. I'm chronically ill, so I immediately zoned in on this prompt when I saw it. Every description is based off of my own personal experiences and how I think they might be relevant to him; these do not reflect the experience of every person with a chronic illness or disability. Hope you enjoy me seizing the opportunity to write another comparative longitudinal essay under the guise of fanfiction asdffghjk

There were some things that never got easier with time.

His head was swimming and he hadn’t even had coffee yet. It didn’t feel like he had any excuse; the full moon had been two days ago. But still there was the ache in his jaw, the slugishness and imbalance that came with fatigue, the feeling that his limbs were only hanging on by a thread.

One night, he had shut his eyes against the swirling ceiling, swaying back and forth even though he was lying motionless in bed. “I’m made of wood” he muttered, his voice hoarse and dry.  
Nymphadora watched him from the edge of the bed, unimpressed by his dramatics. “Last I checked” she said “you’re made of meat like the rest of us. I’m not into screwing puppets.”  
Remus chuckled, cracking his eyes open to look at her. Her hair was down to her shoulders, a wiry dark brown with bursts of blonde wherever she felt like having one. Her green eyes were loving but not sympathetic, not sick of Remus’s problems nor overly concerned about them. He remembers the contrast of his mother’s overbearing worry and his father’s distant dismissal and thanks whatever God is up there that he has a wife who found the perfect in-between.  
“My joints” he elaborates “they feel like wood. I don’t feel any muscle or blood, just stiffness. Like a puppet that’s yet to be polished.”

Dora tilts her head, looking at him with a hint of mischief. “I’d say Pinocchio has a better fashion sense than you, love.” Still, she takes his hand, running her thumb over the ridge of his palm. Her skin is like a baby’s compared to his, so wrinkled and scarred, never quite reforming correctly after years of having to break apart and reshape itself. He needed to put lotion on if he didn’t want them to hurt, but split skin tended to be the least of his worries. The hard, constant pain of ill-adjusted bones tended to take the forefront, along with whatever happened to be his symptom of the day. Whether it would be nausea, headaches, muscle spasms, fainting spells, chills, fatigue… it was just a game of wait-and-see every time he woke up. He never did understand how Dora or Sirius could ever love someone who felt so ill all the time, but decades of being lectured into a corner had taught him to stop asking about it. If she wanted to be married to a weathered doll, that was her choice. She’d said so herself.

On his 50th birthday, Molly had given him a cane. He already had a few of them somewhere, strewn about to collect dust whenever he decided that he was going to be stubborn and manage without, but she pushed it on him with the persistence of someone it was impossible to say no to. It was, truthfully, the sturdiest cane he’d ever held, made out of some sort of metal as opposed to the bent wooden ones he’d gotten ahold of in the past. The handle felt cushioned, and there were silver buttons that he could push in to extend or retract it however he so desired. It was one of the most practical things he’d ever owned, so it didn’t take him long to figure out that it was Muggle. Out of everyone, he sends her a special thank-you card, swearing that he’ll actually use it so that she wouldn’t have to continue seeing him “hobble around like some sort of poor idiot”– her words, not his.

Until he’d started using it, he hadn’t realized how screwed his posture was. He’d always hunched his shoulders in an unconscious attempt to be less noticeable, but the hunch was coming from his back now and he spasmed every time he tried to correct it. His neck, at least, had a chance of being saved from all the cricks and pains it endured, but he had given up on his lower back way back when he was 18.

“What’ll you be for Halloween this year, Remus?” Peter had asked him in their fifth year. “Sirius thinks we all should match again.”  
“Birds of a feather, and all that” Sirius said “Maybe you could take one from Mary’s book and go as a sexy dog.”  
Remus was, at that point, propped up in bed, one of his arms in a cast and his back curved at an uncomfortable angle after he’d taken quite a fall. “I’m going to be the Hunchback of Notre Dame” he deadpanned.  
There was a beat of silence before Peter asked, “The what?”

 

Once, on the day before, Dora had idly asked him if he was in pain. He was 52, stuck in the body of a 96 year old rag, and for no reason other than the coming change, it hurt to breathe. He had looked at her, caring and curious, and the honest answer came naturally to him, letting itself be released after decades of being trained to allow himself to complain.  
“All the time.” He sighs. It feels like he’s being squeezed as some sick parody of a chew toy. The symptom of the day was nausea. It might be hunger pangs, but he didn’t want to risk eating.

She looked down at herself, still in ripped leggings after all these years, never outgrowing her punk phase despite the hatred of her extended family. She looks over at the bob of blue hair that’s tucked into the corner of the dining room table, an equally as punk looking preteen who was too invested in a book to hear either of them. She looks back down at Remus, at his slightly sallow face, and kisses his vein-ridden hand. “Do we make it better?”

Technically, she doesn’t. There’s nothing any of them can do to stop the days where he’s sure that he’s dying, or to quell the literally constant array of pain he’s in, the kind he could never complain about lest he never be able to stop. There’s only so many ways she can heal his broken bones, only so many ounces of “medical” chocolate she could give him, only so many times she could wait for him to catch up on a walk.

But he squeezes her hand with a small smile, seeing his whole world in her dark blue eyes, and for a moment he has all the strength he needs to get through the day. It wasn’t about making it not hurt; it was about what made it worth dealing with.

“Yes” he says honestly “Yes, you do.”

 


End file.
